history museum · $ · since 1978
Denver Firefighters Museum
Old Fire Station One, still full of engines, brass poles and helmets.
Four galleries inside the Denver Fire Department's old Station One, two blocks off 16th Street and around the corner from the Mint. The apparatus floor is the draw: hand-drawn hose carts, horse-era steam engines and later trucks parked where the working rigs used to sit. Kids can try on turnout gear. Adults get the harder history of how Denver's big fires rewrote its building codes. Budget an hour. Admission is sold at the door only, cash or card, since the museum stopped selling tickets online, and a story-and-craft hour runs the first and third Saturday of the month.
Why go. The best hour downtown for a kid who likes trucks, and a real one for adults too.
Several Front Range library systems lend free passes to this museum; check yours before you pay at the door.
A short walk from Denver Firefighters Museum
Regal UA Denver Pavilions 4DX & RPX
$$Downtown's only remaining multiplex, up on the third level of the Pavilions.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 500 16th Street #310
Peaks Lounge
$$$Twenty-seventh floor bar with a wall of glass facing the Front Range.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 650 15th Street
Denver Pavilions
$$Three open-air levels of shops, restaurants and the last downtown cinema.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 500 16th Street
54thirty Rooftop
$$$Downtown's highest open-air rooftop, named for the elevation it sits at.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 1475 California Street
historic concert hallParamount Theatre
$$A 1930 movie palace on Glenarm that now books comedians and touring bands.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 1621 Glenarm Place
Bellco Theatre
$$Five thousand seats inside the Convention Center, booked for comics and family tours.
Downtown, a few blocks over · 700 14th Street